Recap of the King of Nothing games thus far

Well this Wednesday the Rattler and Gorehound came out, and it's time to move on from my current list. As I said previously I'll only be playing whats out with Grymkin to try and learn as much about units, as I experiment with the king. I had been playing a very infantry heavy list, and was hoping for 10 games. But with limited play time 9 will have to do. Here again is my list;

King of Nothing Bump in the Night

Theme: Bump in the Night

3 / 3 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army

The King of Nothing - WB: +28

- Cage Rager - PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 14)

- Crabbit - PC: 7 (Battlegroup Points Used: 7)

- Crabbit

- Crabbit - PC: 7 (Battlegroup Points Used: 7)

- Crabbit

- Gorehound - PC: 6

Lord Longfellow - PC: 0

Witchwood - PC: 0

Glimmer Imp - PC: 0

Cast Imp -PC: 1

Dread Rots - Leader & 9 Grunts: 12 X2

Hollowmen - Leader & 9 Grunts: 13 X2

- Lantern Man - PC: 3

Neigh Slayers - Leader & 4 Grunts: 12

The Plan Going In

Coming from Cryx I thought I could play an infantry swarm well. The basic plan was to use the shield guards and cloud wall to deliver the hard hitting dread rots. Coupled with scything touch and Master of Ruin I should be able to drop heavies, and hopefully keep the King himself safe. The Hallowmen will thin the ranks and contest the zones, while Longfellow is a late game assassination piece. The glimmer imp and the Neigh Slayers will target the high Def models, and hopefully that'll cover it.

Things We Fell In Love With

Hallowmen really surprised me. A solid unit almost always shooting in 2 man CRA's comes in at Rat effective 7 PS 13. They attrition well, and when they need to the charge they are respectable. With apparition and concealment from the Laternman they aren't trivial to tie up or remove. I initially thought of them as a filler but I'll need to explore them more later.

Neigh Slayers: PS 7 Armor Piercing is legit, especially combined with the potential -4 armor swing. They die to a stiff breeze, but make for a solid second line unit if you can screen them in. They also help hit things the Dreadrots struggle against.

Lord Longfellow: This is a love/hate. He's nasty, and mean. But I don't think he's worth his points. Similar to the Hellslinger Phantom though he's really solid for free.

Cage Rager: Super solid. Harder to remove then initially expected. His damage output is respectable and when he gets corpses you'll love him even more. For the King, I'll never leave home without one.

Cask Imps: With the smoke cloud and some semi lucky rolling these are hysterical. I'm super stoked to test mad caps with him, though this may fall into the "cute" category.

Gorehound: He might get his own blog article. This guy is a rock star as far as I'm concerned. Fury 3, sprint animus, and ghostly. Threats 12 in a vacuum, and can use pull to enable other models to get there. I really love him.

Things to watch out for

We're slow. Dreadrots being speed 5 with 1 inch melee made for a lot more cloud walling then I initially thought.

We have issues with higher def. The glimmer imp helps, but only so much. Neigh Slayers are solid but the core of the army is DreadRots and Hallowmen, Mat 6 and Rat 5 respectively. Vs a lot of medium to high def models it can get rough.

Positioning. Thats a lot of models to trip over, even with Apparition on a unit. Balancing clock and optimal positioning is a skill I haven't yet mastered with them, yet.

Clock. I've never clocked myself in a game...That being said I came close with this list a few times. Kingdom of Silence (Once per turn when a warbeast in the King's battlegroup is destroyed by an enemy attack, immediately after the attack is resolved, the King can cast a spell without spending fury)and Arcana can put you in the think tank for WAY TOO LONG. I'm confident the more I play him the faster I'll get at this, but it was an unexpected hurdle for sure.

Results

Well I got 9 games in and went 7-2. I had 3 scenario wins, 3 assassination wins and one win by turn 7 being up on CP. I'm trying very hard not to get "Gotcha" wins. I'm explaining arcana, reminding people of them, and the jank the King brings. Me winning because my opponent doesn't understand or know something doesn't teach me anything. The loses came to Hexy1, and Grissel 2. Hexy1's feat would decimate me. I played around it too much and in the end I sent the King in for Master of Ruin plus Scything Touch(not on the King I know that doesn't work) on a Mammoth, and it didn't die. Needless to say I died the next turn. Vs Grissel the WarWagon bullied the table with me. This game really emphasized the shorter threat ranged of the DreadRots, and the paper like defense of the Neigh Slayers. I smoked it turn 1 and 2 to prevent charges/impacts, made sure there was no where for his base to be placed for tramples and just ate the random shots. I finally went into it turn 3 and failed to kill it. The next turn it killed 10 dudes on impacts not to mention it was firing too. I was able to kill it the following round but I was pretty thin, and the King died on the following turn. These are both things I'm confident I could play better into next time around, but did help solidly my theory that this list was inherently flawed. It also runs really close on fury, and when Crabbits start kicking the bucket it can get really tight.

What's Next

With the Rattler and the Gorehound now released I'm happy to start testing my light warbeast "spam" lists. It's basically the King, 1 Cage Rager, 4 Gorehounds, 2 Rattlers, 8 Crabbits, 4 Gremlin Swarms, the Lovely Lady, a Glimmer Imp, and 2 min Dreadrots. I'm ignoring ADR for testing reasons. I'm one game in but we'll save that for next time! How are you doing with the King? What hurdles have you run into?